Hearts and minds

In the early '80s, Moving Hearts electrified the Irish music scene with a provocative amalgam of rock, folk and jazz that saw them turn in stunning live gigs and albums that took musical eclecticism to dizzying new heights. They had a political edge too, indeed some saw them as the political wing of the Wolfe Tones, while Eamon McCann described them as simply “the best rock’n’roll band in the world”.

But then, any unit containing such mercurial personages as Christy Moore, Donal Lunny, Declan Sinnott, Keith Donald, Noel Eccles, Davy Spillane et al was at the very least going to stir minds as well as hearts, not to mention toes. After the inevitable break-up, they left a legacy that enriches the back catalogue of Irish music, but now, after the usual outpourings of the local rumour mill, Messrs. Lunny, Spillane, Donald, Eccles, O’Neill and Kellaghan have decided to take to the stage again, along with past contributor Anto Drennan and new boy Graham Henderson. And not a vocalist in sight!
For those who were asleep, or simply not around back then, Keith Donald directs their attention to the track ‘Category’ on the first, eponymously-titled album from 1981.
“That track has a rock’n’roll rhythm section, pipes playing an Irish melody and a jazz sax solo. That for me sums up Moving Hearts,” he explains. Eccles agrees, but adds “‘The Lark’ is another one. It’s a 12-minute set of jigs recorded after we had really broken up.
“If ‘Category’ was where it started, ‘The Lark’ encompasses where the band got to. To rock, jazz and Irish folk we added influences from world music, Latin, African, bouzouki, keyboards, electric and acoustic bass and percussion from different ethnic groovings. It was incredibly innovative for its time, but it’ll be interesting now to present it to an audience that over the intervening years has become more attuned to different music styles from all over. I don’t think anybody ever did it the way the Hearts did it, and we’re bringing 20 years more experience to what we did then, even if we’re all a bit slower now!”
I ask them about key memories from back then. Donald recalls an early rehearsal in the Baggot Inn.
“It was the day Davy joined. I brought along every instrument I own and tried them all out, but my moment of realisation came when I discovered that the range of the soprano sax was exactly the same as the uilleann pipes. I had probably the only curved soprano sax in Ireland back then and finding how it worked with the pipes was a magic moment for me.”
Eccles recalls meeting the band for the first time, walking in with Donal Lunny, straight after playing a gig with the Symphony Orchestra.
“I think Davy thought I was the bank manager, the way I was dressed. But playing at Self Aid in 1986 was another great memory, coming on just as it was getting dark, with a full moon and we did about fifteen minutes straight.”
Donald agrees with my contention that with the confused state the record industry is in today, it’s unlikely that a Moving Hearts starting out now would attract a major label in the way WEA got behind them. However neither man rules out the possibility of live or studio albums by the new line-up.
But it wasn't with such intentions that the current reincarnation emerged. Philip King asked Donald to do something with Lunny in Pulse Studios and The Storm album in pro-tools was in front of them, prompting talk about the band. A month later Eccles, working with Lunny in connection with the Ryder Cup, casually asked if he’d thought of putting the band together again. Lunny responded positively and it grew from there – although none too easily, with various members flitting thither and yon on solo projects. Eventually a line-up was assembled.
Many will regret the absence of both Moore and Sinnott, but to dispel any rumours of rancour, Donald says: “I met both at a recent gig in Vicar St. and they were both very encouraging and both promised to drop in on the gigs. But Declan left Moving Hearts a long time ago, and since we wanted the new band to be an instrumental unit, Christy wasn’t really an issue. Anto Drennan toured with us in the eighties, and although I’ve never met Graham Henderson, he’s worked with Donal a lot over the last five years.”
So that sense of cohesion that bonded the first Hearts line-up is still at play. But outside observers reckoned that the band was often hampered by its “co-op” approach, whereby all members have to agree every decision. Does this apply to the new outfit?
“Kind of, but there’s a core of us driving it, purely for logistical reasons," Donald responds. "Myself and Noel are probably the only ones in Dublin most of the time. I have views for and against the co-op approach. When everybody is getting the same money, it takes those differences out of the equation and everybody works for each other. But it can take an awful long time to make decisions. Back then it was a continuous rolling debate, and difficult for the business world to deal with.”
Eccles also owns up to past mistakes.
“We made some bad business decisions too. We owned our own PA, trucks and a bus, for which bank loans had to be serviced, whether the band was working or not. So we had to work all the time. We couldn’t just take a month off to write. It became a destructive thing. We had to tour just to pay off the bank loans. So this time we’re not buying a PA or a bus!”
Now that 20 years has passed, will everything be as do-able now as it was before? The sax man admits that “there’s a piece I did on alto sax in The Storm and I don’t get those notes any more. They’re way up in the stratosphere and I’ll have to work quite a bit to get them again.”
His percussion accomplice reflects that the instruments in use today, especially keyboards and drums, which date the sound on The Storm, are far better today than they were in the eighties. That will add a fresh dimension to how the new band actually sounds.
Another difference relates to Donald’s frank views on his own sobriety.
“As a recovering alcoholic, I’m sober now, and have been for over 16 years. Some of my playing back then was really ropey. There are videos of the band, like Self Aid, and I look and wonder how I got through it all, especially bearing in mind my intake on the morning of the gig. That’s not an issue any more, and I’m a stronger player because of it.”
I mention the thorny subject of radio play, hazarding the observation that there are now opportunities for the kind of eclectic and challenging music Moving Hearts make to get exposure form the likes of John Kelly, Donald Helme, John Creedon and others. But from Keith Donald’s perspective, little has changed over the decades.
“Irish radio is in thrall to advertisers and doesn’t perform the service it set out to do. It’s scandalous how little opportunity there is on Irish radio for new Irish product. It’s an absolute outrage. Apart from the few specialist programmes, by and large they’re swimming against the commercial pressures and I think it’s misguided.”
While Donald’s current listening tends towards past jazz such as a recently-discovered 1968 album by English saxophonist Tubby Hayes, Eccles is a big fan of Snow Patrol and tells of his niece, when she heard him listening to the latest U2 album, saying, “But Uncle Noel, aren’t you too old to be listening to U2?” Eccles laughs, but his listening habits reflect how Moving Hearts is a band from which virtually no influences are debarred.
I talk of a rumour from the mid ‘80s about Moving Hearts planning an album with country and Irish legend Big Tom. Sadly, neither man had heard of it. Donald’s response of “Jesus wept” suggests it’s not an idea that would have appealed to him, while Eccles reckons it wouldn't have been a good career move for either party. When I suggest it might have been the brainchild of Clive Hudson who was running WEA, to whom both acts were signed, Donald replies,“ I would have to question Clive’s state of mind that day, if it was him who thought of it.”
In the early days Moving Hearts’ songs dealt with a variety of issues: nuclear holocaust (‘Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette’), colonialism (‘Irish Ways And Irish Laws’), American terrorism (‘Allende’) and corruption in the Irish legal system and Gardai (‘Open Those Gates’). Such overt dabbling in politics, generally missing from contemporary Irish music, saw the band being branded with Irish republican sympathies. The absence of a vocalist this time around means no songs with political leanings, so does this reflects a softening of attitudes?
Northerner Keith outlines his own manifesto.
“I have never been a member of a political party. My political stance would roughly parallel the Northern Ireland peace process. I perceived a lot of injustice in Northern Ireland and was part of a band that commented on injustices around the world. The injustices are different now and I’m not in a band that has that polemic going for it. For me, politics and music are now separate. Back then they were closely involved because Christy Moore was in the band. My politics are somewhat left of centre, and I marched in Dublin against the Iraq war.”
Belfastman Eccles reminds me that the Moving Hearts’ ‘80s line-up contained two Northern Protestants: “A strange thing for a band seen as the political wing of the Wolfe Tones! During my time in the Hearts, I think the band saw another side of the argument. I grew up in Belfast through the Troubles and suffered broken noses and stuff, but my music friends stretched across the divide. We learned a lot from each other and became more focused on injustices in general, rather than specific injustices.”
Donald believes that some felt the band pushed a particular agenda.
“All we were really pushing was the right to comment on injustice. We debated every line of every song we sang. Everybody had the power of veto and everybody supported every line that was sung.”
The discussion prompts Eccles to recall a bizarre gig in The Astoria in Bundoran around 1982.
“We’d finished the gig and the crew, as usual, got the gear off stage really fast, so we could hit the road. The band was backstage towelling ourselves down when there’s banging on the door and a voice begging us to play the national anthem, otherwise the crowd would tear the place down. We’d never played the anthem before! Because the gear was packed away, my snare drum and Keith’s sax were all that we could muster to play anything.”
”So,” Keith recalls with a laugh, “two Northern Protestants went on stage and played ‘The Soldier’s Song’ to a nationalist audience and peace reigned."
With gigs in Glenties ahead of them, I wonder if the band has had time to rehearse the national anthem, but beyond those gigs and the two at Vicar St., what happens next?
“We have absolutely no plans beyond those gigs," Donald continues. "In our heads this is just a one-off thing”.
I can’t help suspecting other heads will wish that the long-awaited reunion of one of the most inventive bands ever will turn out to be much more lasting than that.
Moving Hearts play the Highlands Hotel, Glenties (February 2 & 3)and Vicar St., Dublin (8 & 9).